ENSO Updates (2007 thru 2023)

[Ntxw]

Will see how tomorrows Nino areas update reflect towards the crashing SOI.

Most areas should show slight warming. As seen in the sea surface temperature anomaly map, all areas of ENSO showed continued gradual warming temperatures.

[cycloneye]

Climate Prediction Center 4/9/12 Update

Nino 3.4 cooled slightly from -0.2C that was at last week's update to -0.3C in this week's one.

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/a ... ts-web.pdf

[Ntxw]

Well there goes my guess from the last update lol. SOI is low but not as low as the past several days.

[cycloneye]

Here is a complete global monitoring update on how the Oceans are by CPC. The peeps will find plenty of detailed info here on how things are progressing.

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/G ... urrent.pdf

[MGC]

GOM positive anomaly is scary going into the 2012 season.....hopefully a stronger El Nino developes and holds down TC formation this year......MGC

[Ntxw]

^ It is a scary thought. Good thing it is April and the above anomalies are relative to this time of year which is still cool compared to June-Sept in terms of raw surface temperatures.

[Ptarmigan]

GOM positive anomaly is scary going into the 2012 season.....hopefully a stronger El Nino developes and holds down TC formation this year......MGC

I have seen less active seasons with weak ENSOs. However, they occurred in a cooler phase of the Atlantic. Since we are in a warm phase and PDO is in a cool phase, I don't think we could see a strong El Nino.

[Kingarabian]

The SOI is at almost -4. Isn't it below -8 when we start to see a formation of an El-Nino?

[Blown Away]

%'s still higher for Neutral compared to El Nino?

[Kingarabian]

%'s still higher for Neutral compared to El Nino?

Yeah. I guess the SOI is just like a casual indicator of whats happening in regards of the ENSO. Mondays update proved it because even though the SOI is crashing, the temps managed to rise slightly.

[hurricanetrack]

BOM says this from their update yesterday:

"Following the demise of the 2011–12 La Niña, the state of ENSO across the tropical Pacific remains neutral (neither El Niño nor La Niña). Climate models surveyed by the Bureau of Meteorology suggest that, although the Pacific Ocean will continue to warm over the coming months, a neutral ENSO state will persist into the southern hemisphere winter. Historically, about 70% of the time neutral or El Niño conditions have developed in the year following a 2-year La Niña event."

[wxman57]

Some of you may have noticed that the CFS ENSO model has been updated recently. The new CFSv2 model which is replacing the older version 1 is much more strongly forecasting an El Nino by mid summer. It's actually in very good agreement with the GFS.

From the paper on the CFS page:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10. ... BAMS3001.1

Since the CFS version 1 implementation in 2004(Saha et al. 2006), CPC and many other users have utilized the 4-times-daily seasonal integrations for their monthly and seasonal forecast products. However, the system has many internal inconsistencies. For instance, the R2 atmospheric initial states are made with technology from the 1990s, while the atmospheric model component of CFS is from a decade
later. Thus, the initial states and forecast model are inconsistent, which is a situation that leads to loss of skill during the early part of the integrations.

One of the major goals of executing the new CFSR was to create initial states for the atmosphere, ocean, land, and sea ice that are both state of the art and as consistent as possible with the next version of the CFS version 2.

So the CFSv2 is much more state-of-the-art as far as how it’s initialized. Check out the latest forecast. 3-month average at +.5C by August:

[SFLcane]

Some of you may have noticed that the CFS ENSO model has been updated recently. The new CFSv2 model which is replacing the older version 1 is much more strongly forecasting an El Nino by mid summer. It's actually in very good agreement with the GFS.

From the paper on the CFS page:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10. ... BAMS3001.1

Since the CFS version 1 implementation in 2004(Saha et al. 2006), CPC and many other users have utilized the 4-times-daily seasonal integrations for their monthly and seasonal forecast products. However, the system has many internal inconsistencies. For instance, the R2 atmospheric initial states are made with technology from the 1990s, while the atmospheric model component of CFS is from a decade
later. Thus, the initial states and forecast model are inconsistent, which is a situation that leads to loss of skill during the early part of the integrations.

One of the major goals of executing the new CFSR was to create initial states for the atmosphere, ocean, land, and sea ice that are both state of the art and as consistent as possible with the next version of the CFS version 2.

So the CFSv2 is much more state-of-the-art as far as how it’s initialized. Check out the latest forecast. 3-month average at +.5C by August:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/C ... o34Sea.gif

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/C ... o34Mon.gif

Ouch...

[cycloneye]

I have a question for wxman57 regarding the NCEP models CFS and CFSv2. They look very different with those forecasts. Why is that?

CFS:

http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/2060 ... sstmon.gif

CFSv2:

http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/6981/nino34mon.gif

Both uploaded with imageshack.us

Thank you wxman57 for the long answer to this important question that I had about why the different forecasts by CFS and CFSv2. By the way, CFS will be discontinued in June.

[wxman57]

I was studying Nino 3.4 SST anomalies to compare analog seasons for 2012. Wanted to expand the view to the year before then compare the analog seasons side-by-side. Came up with the following graphics.

First, a comparison of Phil Klotzbach's analogs 1957 and 1965. Not much of a comparison between 1956, 1964 and 2008 leading up to the analog seasons:


But when I compared 2008-2009 to 2011-2012, using the latest CFSv2 2012 predictions, I got a graphic that is almost identical to the 2008-2009 pattern for this season:


Now, Nino 3.4 anomalies are only part of the analog, but the coming season's SST pattern in the Pacific is quite close to that of 2009. We know the Euro is forecasting quite high pressures across the Atlantic this season, stemming from a persistent +NAO - meaning a stronger Bermuda high, stronger easterly trades, more upwelling resulting in cooler SSTs in the MDR. Not sure of the mean sea level pressure anomalies in 2009 (and '57, '65) compared to what is predicted for this year.

Note that 2001 is no longer an analog season. Phil had put that one in because of the possibility 2012 would be a "neutral" year. But it's looking more likely an El Nino will develop. That takes out an analog with 15 named storms, meaning the analog seasons now have 8, 6 and 9 named storms. I still think there's a very good chance 2012 will have fewer than 10 named storms, possibly with only 3-4 hurricanes and 1-2 majors.

[wxman57]

May need to include 1951 as an analog season, though it may not match in terms of Atlantic SSTs or the predicted strength of the Bermuda High.

[cycloneye]

The SOI continues to fall and if it crosses negative 8,El Nino will be sonner rather than later.

[Kingarabian]

The SOI continues to fall and if it crosses negative 8,El Nino will be sonner rather than later.

Jeez it was just 5.1.

[cycloneye]

Finnally the crash stopped at the daily SOI.

http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/seaso ... soivalues/

[hurricanetrack]

Well, so far, the MDR is not looking all that cool to me:

http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/anomwne.gif

Of course, it makes no difference what it looks like out there now, I suppose it really matters when we get to A/S/O. Still, there are some .25 to .50 areas in there and very little negative values.